State Sen. Paul Koering, R-Fort Ripley, told KLKS on Friday that he will not vote for the Marriage and Family Protection Act, a bill that would make Minnesota's marriage laws gender-neutral, allowing same-sex couples many of the rights currently denied by Minnesota statute. Koering, who is gay and a Republican, said he would vote against it because the state faces bigger problems.

I didn't realize a vote in support of equal rights (and rights for himself) would preclude a Senator from working on other issues. Don't give this man a stick of gum and ask him to walk at the same time...

If you'd like to share your thoughts with Koering, feel free to email him at [email protected]. I hope his twisted logic and political ambition let him sleep well at night.

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What bigger problems? Are the glaciers closing in again? Have those pesky Canadians launched yet another invasion?

What could be more important than fairness and equality?

I don't know about exquisite but his self loathing is par for the course. The only difference between Koering and some of his closeted Democrat and Republican friends is that he's out. Sort of. It’s unlikely that GLBT person trapped on the political closet of bigoted parties can ever really be called out.

But closeted or not he has plenty of company. Barney Frank gutted ENDA and Barbara Milkuski voted for DOMA. Democrats simply going on pulling the lever for them as if it never happened just as LCR types do for their candidates.

Wow, are we quick to burn a man at the stake. I agree I don't understand this, but instead of grabbing a torch or a pitchfork and joining the angry mob, shouldn't we give someone who's "one of us" the opportunity to explain his reasoning?

Quisling, after Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany to conquer his own country, is a term used to describe traitors and collaborators.

I love the derivative term coined by the late John Dentinger of Los Angeles: This guy is a queersling, an openly gay man too conflicted, or simply too cowardly, to stand up for his own causes. (Other commenters above have called him a "gay Uncle Tom" or another Roy Cohn --- different ways to express the same disdain for a coward who loves a cock in his mouth just as much as the rest of us.)

Perhaps Senator Koering is simply one of those Log Cabiners who say "I'm a Republican first and a gay man second." Fine --- in my book, that's another definition for a queersling.

P.S. I failed to include an essential facet: A queersling is not only a coward, but also a traitor, a collaborator with the enemy. As I found someone commenting at baptistwatch.org regarding a different GOP politician, this one closeted:

He sucks up to those who can give him cover and does their bidding without hesitation, even though he hurts people like himself, just so that he can "pass" for what he isn't - not gay. A Quisling (Queersling?).

Apparently, the term "queersling" gets re-invented from time to time, not surprisingly.

You know, this is a represenative republic, not really a democracy as so many people make the mistake of thinking.
Now how do we know that he is not representing precisely what his constituients want him to? Those people whom he represents may have told him that their concerns go far beyond the marriage amendment, and that if his voting for it jeapordizes more important legislation which may help stabilise the economy, then he should look to that.

Folks in the LGBT community, I took the invitation to write to this Minnesota State Senator and got back a long long long winded expose from his admin assistant who berated all of us for not seeing his bosses protectionist point of view, that being, he says, his constituents were totally against his voting for this bill. While I can really understand how self hating this man is and what a danger he exposes in himself what really pissed me off was the off-handed remark that he had more important issues than civil rights and equality for everyone. However on a reply I asked whoever wants to respond that his boss certainly seems to have the powers to walk on water to quote his source that his constituents were against the bill and further to provide us with proof. Here is the exact quote from my email:
"Regarding the decision to avoid the obvious negativity to SF 120. How do you know that your boss’s constituents do not favor this bill? Will you or can you positively state with the sources, I. E. a paid analysis and a preference poll? Or was it just a bunch of hate mongers growling and gnashing their proverbial teeth? Please respond and state the facts Okay"?
Like I say the response was in the form of a chain letter that went on and on and on. For the most part it had nothing to do with much of anything which by brothers and sisters is pretty typical of a career politician these days. So as I suspect the senator is deathly afraid that he might be the catalyst to open that can of worms and find that the lid to Pandora’s Box is open and cannot be shut. California's Prop 8 while a set back may be our shinning moment that the Religious Right may not have seen coming and I am sure that the senator is or was hoping that it would all go away and he would once again be safe in his glass closet. Say it ain't so Dorothy, the twerp closed with the statement that he had spent to much time already.....

Roy Marcus Cohn (February 20, 1927 – August 2, 1986) was an American conservative lawyer who became famous during the investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy into alleged Communists in the U.S. government, and especially during the Army-McCarthy Hearings.

The fictional film and play Angels in America feature him as a character in his later years during his battle with HIV, in which Cohn is portrayed as a self-hating, power-hungry hypocrite who is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as he lies dying of AIDS.